Aren't there already a few people dead and fires and fireworks and it's only just started ?

I'd always meant to get to Rio for the Carnival, seemed a good idea as it always co-incides with my birthday. But I wouldn't be safe there.

madlyxxxLinda in London

We have the 2nd biggest street carnival here in London at the end of August each year. I live on top of it and have 20 years of pix of me dancing in the middle of it... They go down this road. Most people leave town, but I love it.

I can't do Rio, I don't speaka da Portugeuse !

Brazilian gorgeous men and their sexy hot dark women in London are mindbogglingly beautiful with the maddest funniest sexiest accents. But not many of them would go to Brazil, anytime soon

We have the 2nd biggest street carnival here in London at the end of August each year. I live on top of it and have 20 years of pix of me dancing in the middle of it... They go down this road. Most people leave town, but I love it.

You have a weekly freak show in Camden Town. Not sure if that's a good thing or not, but certainly a must see if in Lonodn.

Aren't there already a few people dead and fires and fireworks and it's only just started ?

I'd always meant to get to Rio for the Carnival, seemed a good idea as it always co-incides with my birthday. But I wouldn't be safe there.

madlyxxxLinda in London

We have the 2nd biggest street carnival here in London at the end of August each year. I live on top of it and have 20 years of pix of me dancing in the middle of it... They go down this road. Most people leave town, but I love it.

I can't do Rio, I don't speaka da Portugeuse !

Brazilian gorgeous men and their sexy hot dark women in London are mindbogglingly beautiful with the maddest funniest sexiest accents. But not many of them would go to Brazil, anytime soon

The 2010 video was for lesaucer he ask for more.

So far no reports of serious injuries or deaths.

A fierce fire ripped through Rio de Janeiro's "Samba City" Monday, destroying the costumes and floats of at least three of the city's biggest samba schools weeks before the country's annual Carnival festivities.

The fire, which caused an estimated 10 million reais ($5.95 million) of damage, appeared to send the dreams of thousands of the city's dancers, designers and musicians up in smoke. Many had spent close to a year preparing for the two-day parade.

"I'm in a state of shock. The penny hasn't dropped yet," a school's artistic director, Cahe Rodrigues, told the Guardian. He said the fire destroyed 98 percent of Grand Rio's floats and costumes.

"Our school was gearing up to win Carnival and I don't know if in 29 days we can put on a spectacle on the same level as we had hoped. It's all burned, all destroyed."

The president of a school called Uniao da Ilha broke down on the news show “Good Morning Brazil” today, saying the effort to stage a parade must now “start from zero,” reported GlobalPost's senior correspondent in Brazil, Erik German.

“It’s unfortunate,” the school president said, “But let us never lose our joy.”

Samba schools are more like massive production companies than schools and they spend the year building parade floats, sewing elaborate costumes and choreographing huge performances that become the image of Carnival seen around the world, reports German.

The fire, which investigators suspect was an accident, began around 7 a.m. and lasted for hours. There were no initial reports of serious injuries or deaths.

The fire appears to have virtually destroyed the work of three of the city's 12 biggest samba schools, and it is not clear how they will manage to compete in March's competition.

Nonetheless, Rio's Carnival 2011 and its informal parades around the city as well as street parties will surely go on.

“The fire burned everything,” president of Academicos do Grande Rio, Helio de Oliveira, told The New York Times, “but it didn’t burn our Carnaval spirit.”

I would have loved to have made it to the biggest bestest 10million or more dancing drunks staying up for 10 days, the most wonderful party in the world. Oh well... I'm too old now and know noone there nor have the appropriate travelling companion.

I did the Toronto Film Festival for many years (all the parties), whilst working 8 till 6 or 7 for a magazine and sending photographers on celeb shots whilst organising Themed Shop Windows so that the whole city was all Filmy and we'd give prizes and take photos of all the best windows and do a big lunch party then take pix for the feature on it the next day in the paper.

I went to an Apocyplse Now party (how long ago was that and how old was I?) and they'd hired 5 floors of the top of a newly built condo skyscraper on the lake, still all newly craned in and not quite dry concrete. A view of the entire city and of the lake every which way. All windows and everyone I knew and the most amazing food and free drinks brought to you on a tray. They had the smell of napalm on one floor and DeNiro on the other. I can't remember what music they were playing on the top floor, the dance floor, but I danced with Jim Carrey, he was like a teenager, as was I, it was long before he got famous. We wore funny clothes in those days too and danced sexy... lol